Recently, in the electronics field, miniaturization and cost reduction have strongly been required mainly in semiconductors and circuit boards. In such a field, a photolithography technique using a photoresist has hitherto been employed. In this technique, there may be used a process which comprises applying a photoresist on a material to be patterned, exposing it to light through a photomask having a pattern, etching the material to be patterned with an etching solution and then removing the photoresist. In the case of photolithography, there is an advantage that a fine pattern of less than 1 .mu.m can be formed and dimensional accuracy is also superior. On the contrary, there are disadvantages that the equipment is expensive and it costs too much for patterning.
On the other hand, a printing technique capable of patterning at low cost has also been established. As the printing technique, for example, there are mainly four techniques such as rotary intaglio printing, planographic printing, letterpress printing and screen printing. In any printing technique, the minimum width of the pattern is limited to about 50 to 100 .mu.m on mass-production and, at the same time, there is also a problem in dimensional accuracy.
As described above, the pattern size of several .mu.m to about 100 .mu.m and high dimensional accuracy are required for a liquid crystal display, and the pattern size of several tens .mu.m to about 100 .mu.m and large film thickness are also required especially for the circuit board.